ENGLISH
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The footnote links do not work; you will have to scroll down to to the footnotes for expanded information. Opening the blogsite on two seperate windows and keeping one on the footnotes will make it easier to go back and forth. Sorry for the inconvenience, I'm no expert!.
Other links should work.
As you may have gathered from my last posts,
we haven’t been in Turkey during the last week- it was a prearranged trip, part
of it for professional purposes and part for pleasure, with tickets purchased
and hotels booked well in advance. Inevitably, there are pangs of conscience
for not being there in Istanbul to get drenched in the dubious mixture squirted
by our police, or choke on the fumes euphimistically called “tear gas”, or get
our eyes gouged out by the gas cannisters and plastic bullets they shoot
around, or get our heads bashed in by one of the AKP thugs that from time to
time appear at the policemen’s heels wielding clubs with nails driven through
the ends. Had I been there to be carted to hospital with fractures and toxic
fume inhalation, I might have had a clearer conscience but certainly not be
able to write this today.
I might be missing out from the fun and games
at the Taksim “Promenade Park” (Gezi
Parkı) but I’m getting some more insight about what people abroad are
thinking. I have been writing obsessively for over a year now and though I have
skipped many events and details (I have several incomplete articles), I have
gone over the vital points repeatedly. Having come face to face with some
people here, and having entered into correspondence with others, I have found
that certain points need clarification abroad, and I’ll try to do that, at the
risk of repeating myself sometimes.
One person, having understood that the
“Islamism” of the AKP government was a major issue in the conflict, asked me how
many Muslims there were in the country. I then realized some may easily get the
impression that this is an issue of Muslim rulers in conflict with the members another
religion, as occurs in some countries- the Jewish-vs-Muslim conflict in
Palestine, the Hindu-Sikh-Muslim tensions in India, to name a few. The Serbian
Christian-vs-Bosnian Muslim conflict with the siege of Sarajevo and the
massacre at Szebrenitza is also a good example for that kind of conflict,
though the civilized West would rather not remember it.
The struggle in Turkey has no resemblance to
any of these conflicts. The Republic of Turkey as founded and then developed by
Ataturk in the 1920’s is secular, i.e., the State has no religion. The people,
however, are around %98 Muslim. Islam in Turkey under the secular Republic was
liberal, permissive, and only casually observed by a great part of the
population. In fact, the Turkish approach to Islam was much more “moderate”
until the US launched its operation to make Turkey a model of “moderate Islam”!
The AKP brand of “Islamism” that is so hotly opposed in Turkey is exactly the
intolerant, all-encompassing fundamentalism that the US was hypothetically
trying to curb, but is still ill-advisedly nurturing through its support.
An article on the Gezi uprising appeared in the June 10th issue of the well known
French newspaper Libération.
Reading
the Libération article in France, June 10th, 2013.
(Image
from my own camera, of course.)
True to its name, the paper speaks favourably
of the uprising. But there are bothersome fallacies that echo other similar
assessments in western media. In recounting the triumphs of Erdoğan’s AKP, the
paper says:
“He (Erdoğan) rightfully reminds us that
through its ten years in power he and the AKP have been elected and re-elected
regularly, and that his party represents half of the Turkish population. His
country has experienced incredible growth, he has put the soldiers back in
their barracks, and Turkey has once again become a power unsurpassed since
Ottoman times”.[1]
These are arguments that echo the US
viewpoint, when the US press, and those that take their cue from it, look away
from Israel, Syria, Iran, Afghanistan, and North Korea long anough to take a
glance at Turkey’s circumstances.
The AKP has emerged from nothing and became
the first party in elections in little over a year. There is a lot of suspicion
that the elections were rigged- with the US
behind he scenes it is not an impossibility- but even if they weren’t,
the US-protected Gülen cult has infiltrated deeply enough to influenced the
poorly educated with promises of salvation, heaven, and, yes, Ottoman glory.
More banal, but manifestly true, are the free bags of coal and care packages
distributed in return for promises of votes.
The “incredible growth” experienced by the
country has been at the expense of national assets that have been sold wholesale
to foreign interest groups, and the apparent rise in affluence has been on
credit, with people borrowing more and more to cover their accumulated debts.
Regarding that line about “power unsurpassed
since Ottoman times...“, at the height of it’s power in the way back in the
17th century it was a bullying expansionist state as all empires indeed are.
Later it fell into dissolution and disintegration as all empires eventually do.
Check out the phrase “the sick man of Europe” and see to whom it applied!
That the military has been forced back into
their barracks is often considered a triumph for democracy in post-Fascist
Europe, but that would not explain why Chief of Staff Gen. Necdet Özel, so
democratically neutral, so careful in his uninvolvement, is so strongly
criticized and hated by so many. Whatever people have said afterwards, not a
single one of the three military interventions in the history of the Turkish Republic
has been against the wishes and the expectations of the people, seeing as they
all came after periods of uncontrolled chaos.[2]
The armed forces are a legitimate, constitutional organization entrusted with
the protection and defense of a country’s land, people, and institutions. If
the police, which is widely suspected of serving foreign interests on religious
grounds,[3]
and can no longer be expected to protect the citizens and the institutions of
the country, is it a merit for the armed forces to remain in its barracks?
I am writing this article on June 16th. Last
night the police forced its way into the “Promenade (Gezi) Park” again. Worried, I sent an SMS to someone very close to
us, who frequently goes to the park, said Ihad heard about the park being very
active and asking if she was alright. This was the reply.
“Yes, ‘active’ is an insufficient
description. I am in Izmit (i.e., she
wasn’t there) the police completely vacated the Gezi Park and exercised serious violence. I sent a few photos. The
“tomas”[4]
squirted chemicals instead of water, people got first degree burns on their
skins. People got crushed under the ‘tomas’”.[5]
(She is a doctor, with contact to other doctors on the spot, so her report is
not to be taken lightly!)
Terrorists assembled in park; the police just had to get rid of them!
(Image from the media.)
Burns from pressurized water allegedly mixed with chemicals.
(Image from the media.)
More burns from the same reason.
(Image from the media.)
Well, the soldiers are in their barracks, so
this must still be a democracy, so
whopeeee!
[1] The original wording:
“...Il
a raison de rappeler que’en dix ans de pouvoir, lui et le AKP ont été élus,
puis réélus régulièrement, et que son partie représente la moitié du peuple
turc. Son pays a connu une croissance remarcable , il a remis les militaires
dans les casernes, et la Turquie et redevenue une puissance indépasséé depuis
l’Empire ottoman...”
[2] The three times the military
actively intervened were on May 27th, 1960, March 12th 1970, and September 12th
1980. All three were in circumstances of anarchy and extreme violence.The AKP
also likes to count the National Security Council Resolutions of February 28th,
1997, as a fourth “coup”, and has been busily
arresting officers and also civilians, now aged and mostly retired, who were in
someway involved. At the time the press had been very vocal regarding the
dangers of rising fundamentalism, against which the resolutions were passed.
The
moral cost of keeping the soldiers in their barracks has been very high;
fabricated evidence, false witnesses and outright blackmail have been employed
to bring it about, with the collusion of an infiltrated police and compromised
judiciary. Most of this blog has been about this wide-ranging, devious
operation to deprive the Republic of Turkey of its defenders.
[3] Much has been written and discussed
about the infiltration of the Gülen sect, serving US interests, infiltrating
the police and the judiciary.
[4] A “toma” is an armored police
vehicle that is equipped to squirt pressurized water. “Toma” is an acronym for
“Vehicle for Intervening in Public Incidents” (Toplumsal Olaylara Müdahele Aracı)
[5] Original text message:
“Evet
hareket az kalır ben izmitteyim ama gezi parkını tamamen polis boşalttı ve
ciddi şiddet uyguladı bir kaç foto gonderdim. Tomalar su yerine kimyasal sıktı
ciltlerinde birinci derece yanık oldu. İnsanlar ezildi tomaların altında.”
